Burning Bush Research Articles

CLERGY AND INTELLECTUALS AS ‘CLASS ENEMY’: THE “BURNING BUSH”

CLERGY AND INTELLECTUALS AS ‘CLASS ENEMY’: THE “BURNING BUSH”

Credo

Credo Mary Gordon (bio) I believe in the Temptation in the Desert I believe in the Terror in the Garden I believe in the Seven Last Words I believe in the Lamb of God I believe in the Beatitudes I believe in the Annunciation I believe in the Visitation I believe in the child born in the manger I believe in the child lost in the temple I believe in the burning bush I believe in the burning coal I believe in the burning hearts on the Emmaus road I believe in the Question: What do you want of me? I believe in the Answer: Sight I believe that Jesus wept. [End Page 253] Click for larger view View full resolution Angels and Demons © 2017 Mariia Prokopenko. [End Page 254] Mary Gordon Mary Gordon is the author of eight novels, including, most recently, There Your Heart Lies (Patheon, 2017), two collections of novellas, two collections of stories, two collections of essays, two memoirs, a biography of Joan of Arc and a writer’s study of the Gospels: Reading Jesus: A Writer’s Encounter with the Gospels. The recipient of many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Academy Award for literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she teaches at Barnard College and lives in New York. Copyright © 2017 Johns Hopkins University Press

Evaluation and mathematical modeling of processing variables for a supercritical fluid extraction of aromatic compounds from Anethum graveolens

The aim of this study is to identify the extraction conditions, using supercritical carbon dioxide as solvent, that maximize the yield of volatile extract from the seeds of Anethum graveolens L. by the use of the response surface method, where the variables pressure, temperature and flow rate of supercritical CO2 were investigated. A 23 factorial design combined with response surface methodology was used in order to achieve the goal. The best set of experimental conditions was determined to be P=100bar, T=35°C and solvent flow rate=1000g/h. The mathematical modeling of the extraction curve was performed under the best experimental conditions, and the olfactory profile of the extract and its antimicrobial activity were compared with the oil obtained from hydrodistillation. The gas chromatography analysis (GC) identified dillapiole, carvone and its isomers to be major compounds. The olfactory profile of A. graveolens extracts obtained was determined by gas chromatography-olfactometry (GC-O), and the most often identified aroma was cheese/bacon for the hydrodistillation oil, whereas in the supercritical extract, the most often identified aroma was burning bush.

Božie vtelenie a obnovenie Božieho obrazu v človeku (Gregor z Nyssy: Život Mojžiša)

The doctrine that God's Incarnation made possible the restoration of God's ima- ge in humans forms the basis of the ascetic teaching of the Greek Christian tradition. It is so also for Gregory of Nyssa in his Life of Moses where he discusses the life of virtue. This stream of thought provides the work with a substantial unity and it emerges in key places: theophany in the burning bush when Moses received the vocation to restore the image of God in him; manna, the miraculous bread from heaven; the theophany on Mount Sinai with the vision of the heavenly tabernacle. The breaking and renewing of the Tables of the Law corresponds with what happened with human nature: damaged by the First Fall, but with the Incarnation renewed into its pristine shining beauty. This idea culminates at the end of the work when Moses dies: the paradoxical circumstances of his death confirm that he fulfilled his vocation.

Pyrophany on Mount Horeb: The Burning Bush

ABSTRACTThe burning bush is one of the most well-known and im-portant miracles in the Pentateuch. Numerous natural explanations have been offered in the literature and a few new ones have been added here, for the bush that burned but was not consumed. Some examples include hallucinogenic drugs, an active volcano, optical illusions, natural gas leak, subterranean fire, St. Elmo’s fire, a bush with red berries or flowers, and a bush that emitted flammable vapors. They have been broadly categorized here based on explanations involving the man Moses, events that might have occurred at the location (Mount Horeb), and explanations involving the bush itself. Those explanations are reviewed here from the perspective of a combustion engineer. The conclusion is that the best explanation for the burning bush is that it was supernatural.

Performing Catastrophe: Erwin Piscator’s Documentary Theatre

This article explores the relationship between aesthetics and politics in documentary theatre. In contrast to approaches in both scholarly literature and artistic practice that assess the political significance of documentary theatre primarily in terms of content, the article discusses how the form of theatre itself can become political. I argue that Erwin Piscator’s post-war documentary theatre seeks, not only to intervene in political issues thematized in the productions, but also to claim a place for theatre as an institution uniquely capable of addressing two pressing questions of post-war politics: how to learn from the past and how to forestall future genocide. Piscator’s documentary productions relied on theatricality and aesthetic experience, offering a useful foil to current documentary theatre with its suspicion of theatricality. I base my argument on archival materials drawn from productions of plays, including The Burning Bush (New York Dramatic Workshop, 1949), The Crucible (Bühnen der Stadt Essen, 1958), The Investigation (Freie Volksbühne Berlin, 1965), and the pageant The Golden Doors (Madison Square Garden, 1943).

The Yeast ATF1 Acetyltransferase Efficiently Acetylates Insect Pheromone Alcohols: Implications for the Biological Production of Moth Pheromones.

Many moth pheromones are composed of mixtures of acetates of long-chain (≥10 carbon) fatty alcohols. Moth pheromone precursors such as fatty acids and fatty alcohols can be produced in yeast by the heterologous expression of genes involved in insect pheromone production. Acetyltransferases that subsequently catalyze the formation of acetates by transfer of the acetate unit from acetyl-CoA to a fatty alcohol have been postulated in pheromone biosynthesis. However, so far no fatty alcohol acetyltransferases responsible for the production of straight chain alkyl acetate pheromone components in insects have been identified. In search for a non-insect acetyltransferase alternative, we expressed a plant-derived diacylglycerol acetyltransferase (EaDAcT) (EC 2.3.1.20) cloned from the seed of the burning bush (Euonymus alatus) in a yeast system. EaDAcT transformed various fatty alcohol insect pheromone precursors into acetates but we also found high background acetylation activities. Only one enzyme in yeast was shown to be responsible for the majority of that background activity, the acetyltransferase ATF1 (EC 2.3.1.84). We further investigated the usefulness of ATF1 for the conversion of moth pheromone alcohols into acetates in comparison with EaDAcT. Overexpression of ATF1 revealed that it was capable of acetylating these fatty alcohols with chain lengths from 10 to 18 carbons with up to 27- and 10-fold higher in vivo and in vitro efficiency, respectively, compared to EaDAcT. The ATF1 enzyme thus has the potential to serve as the missing enzyme in the reconstruction of the biosynthetic pathway of insect acetate pheromones from precursor fatty acids in yeast.

The Love of Baseball: Essays by Lifelong Fans ed. by Chris Arvidson and Diana Nelson Jones

Reviewed by: The Love of Baseball: Essays by Lifelong Fans ed. by Chris Arvidson and Diana Nelson Jones William Harris Ressler Chris Arvidson and Diana Nelson Jones (Eds.). The Love of Baseball: Essays by Lifelong Fans. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2017. 196 pp. Paper, $19.99. The Love of Baseball contains thirty short essays that describe, to quote the back cover of the book, “how [the authors] found a passion for the sport and how their relationship to it changed over the years.” Love is also much more than that. All of its essays reveal how baseball has marked and shaped the relationships the authors have with the most important people in their lives. If you’re reading this review, then you’ve probably heard John Thorn— or someone paraphrasing him— say that baseball is not only about what happens on the field, it’s about who we were with when it happened. So, too, the essays in The Love of Baseball are about who the authors were with as baseball “happened” in their lives. As a result, the essays transcend specific places, times, and favorite teams, making it easy for the reader to relate to the stories they contain. Love describes relationships with friends and family, teammates and teachers. While some even involve imagined relationships with ballplayers and broadcasters (see, e.g., “Meet My Best Friend, John Hiller”), each essay ultimately touches on our most meaningful and intimate relationships. Through the eyes of the thirty authors, we remember how baseball connects us to each other in our daily lives and throughout a lifetime of shared events: birth days, birthdays and deaths; starting school, finishing school, and skipping school; first jobs, dream jobs and long vacations from jobs; courtships, weddings and divorces. Again and again, we are shown how baseball is inextricably woven into the life stories of its fans across major life events and, frequently, spanning generations. “Our affinity for St. Louis is one of the threads that holds our family together” (63). Even when baseball appears to attain spiritual significance, quotidian relationships transcend the supernatural. Joseph Bathanti waxes metaphysical when he claims, “[Maz’s] home run remains one of the mileposts of my consciousness, a Station of the Cross … the Burning Bush; or The Feast of the Epiphany” (151). Despite initial appearances, however, Bathanti is not offering the familiar characterization of baseball as the sacred that contrasts with the profane of our day-to-day lives (see, e.g., “Dark as a Dungeon: Coal Country Baseball”). Rather, his descriptions relate to the way his aging father recounted the young Joseph’s role in Maz’s home run. It reminds us that baseball not only connects us to each other, it connects us to each other as we once were—and [End Page 233] in this case, as we wish we had been. As another author notes, “When [Hazewood] died, I was 13 again for a moment, sitting in the sun and listening to my grandmother sing” (89). And because baseball has such power in our relationships, it is natural that some of us will to extend baseball’s power over us to the ability to repair broken relationships: [Our dad] and our mom separated over a year ago, but playing baseball together seems to remind him how much fun it is to be a family. I know he would be proud if I made the team. Maybe he would even come home for good so he could see the week-day games. (18) Baseball even has the power to touch those who are not necessarily fans of the game. One essay, written by a “yet-to-be fan,” describes a special bond between a father and son: After milking the cows and putting them away for the evening, they climbed in the pick-up truck and headed out, listening to the play-by-play on the radio. But Holly Hill fell behind, so they headed home. Then their team surged, so they turned around and headed toward the game again. I do not know if they ever got there. (167) Ultimately, it seems to matter less whether or not we actually “get there.” Our love of baseball is bound...

The Aristotelian Theory of Chance and its Application in Gersonides’ Biblical Exegesis

One of Gersonides’ fundamental postulates in his biblical exegesis is the idea, developed by the Maimonidean school, that Scripture teaches Aristotelian doctrines related to physics, metaphysics, and anthropology. For Gersonides, this applies chiefly to what he learned from Averroes’ commentaries on Aristotle, supplemented by other theories he developed on his own in the Wars of the Lord. In a recent article I showed that Gersonides uses the Aristotelian theory of chance as a research tool that allows him to reach conclusions about the issues he investigated in his own philosophical and theological work, the Wars of the Lord. Here I want to show that in four places in his Bible commentaries, Gersonides ascribed to biblical characters the use of the Aristotelian concept of chance as a demonstrative tool, just as he used it in the Wars of the Lord. These are: the authentication of Moses’ prophetic mission at the burning bush (Exod. 4:1–9); the Earth’s swallowing up of Korah and his company and of Dathan and Abiram (Num. 16:28ff.); Eliphaz’s speech in Job 4–5; and the survival of those who adhered to the Lord and did not worship Baal Peor when the Israelites were at Shittim (Deut. 4:4).

Letters to the Editor: Moses' "Revelation" on Mount Horeb as Near-Death Experience

Letter from Roger B. Cook to editor discussing a counter argument to Dov Steinmetz's suggestion (1993) that Moses' burning bush revelation was a near-death experience.

Review: Architecture of the Sacred: Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium by Bonna D. Wescoat and Robert G. Ousterhout, eds.

Bonna D. Wescoat and Robert G. Ousterhout, eds. Architecture of the Sacred: Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, 416 pp., 151 b/w illus. $103 (cloth), ISBN 9781107008236 For the French theorist and historian of religion Mircea Eliade, hierophany is the physical manifestation of the sacred in an object. The transfigured object is thus imbued with sacral significance yet retains its connection to materiality by remaining an object in the physical world.1 Although Eliade primarily had in mind natural objects like stones and trees (Moses’s burning bush, for example), it is not difficult to see how built forms fit into his rubric. Indeed, given its inherent multiplicity and absence of singular meaning, architecture is well suited to elision with the sacred, particularly when “the sacred” is understood in terms of ritual activity and experience. Architecture of the Sacred: Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium , edited by Bonna Wescoat and Robert Ousterhout, illuminates the nature of this relationship through twelve wide-ranging and thought-provoking chapters, along with a preface and an afterword. The overarching thrust of the volume is articulated early on by the editors when they note that the built environment is no mere setting or framework within which ritual activity occurs but rather “the architectural setting [functions as] an active agent in the ritual process” (xxiii). This emphasis on the centrality of architecture to the human experience of the sacred grounds the essays of the volume in the spatiotemporal demands of ritual activity and also permits a relative degree of flexibility in terms of analytical and interpretive approach. Within this malleable framework, however, the built environment almost always takes center stage in a way that refreshingly inverts the typical treatment of architecture as handmaiden to ritual. The balance of this relationship is taken up in the first chapter, “Material Culture and Ritual: State of the Question,” wherein Jaś Elsner emphasizes the general problems in scholarship on the built environment and ritual, particularly the—perhaps …

The Beauty of Charisma Introduction: From Golden Calves to Gold Bling

The Beauty of Charisma Introduction: From Golden Calves to Gold Bling

A Beaked and Feathered God

A Beaked and Feathered God

Human freedom and the enigma of martyrdom in the Romanian Orthodox Church (1944–1964)

Between 1944 and 1964, Romanian Orthodox Christians were imprisoned in large numbers, for political reasons. They have been regarded not as individual victims, nor just as members of a particularly vulnerable group targetted in a political climate of ‘scientific atheism’, but in a theological and eschatological light, as part of a cosmic conflict between good and evil. Within the overall context of imprisonment, this article examines the USSR-inspired ‘re-education’ programme, carried out primarily on Orthodox students in Piteşti prison, 1949–1951, to produce the New Man for the new communist era, and the Orthodox group, Rugul Aprins [The Burning Bush], active from 1943 to 1948 and from 1955 to 1958. This group was deeply rooted in the monastic life, first at Antim Monastery, Bucharest, then more widespread, involving Orthodox monastics, theologians, intellectuals from many walks of life and students from a variety of disciplines, many of whom were imprisoned, some to the point of death. The communist New Man emerges as a walking parody of the Christian vision of the human person; in both the above groups, martyrdom appears as enigma, for extant evidence attests to holiness and maximal human freedom attained by many, in the most extreme suffering.

Aquinas and Augustine on Creation and God as “Eternal Being”

AbstractThis paper considers the centrality of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo to both Augustine and Aquinas, especially as these pertain to knowing and naming God. It argues that too much has been ceded to Augustine's purported debt to neo-Platonism, and too little to the doctrine of creation as found in the Christian (and Jewish) middle-Platonists. In these thinkers God's self-disclosure from the burning bush was of signal importance, the ‘I AM WHO I AM’ glossed in terms of God's creative and redemptive power. The theme is traced through Augustine and Aquinas before returning the Christology of the Book of Revelation.

Zaglavlje Dekaloga u Hvalovom zborniku: prilog semantici srednjovjekovne iluminacije

Predmet članka je zastavica naslikana u zaglavlju Dekaloga u rukopisu Hvala krstjanina, pisana za Hrvoja Vukčića Hrvatinića, velikog vojvodu bosanskog i hercega splitskog. U fokusu pažnje je bilješka ispisana na margini, s lijeve strane zastavice, koja u dosadašnjim istraživanjima nije uočena. U pitanju je abrevijatura koja se razrješava kao nomen sacrum, uobičajen u slavenskim jezicima. Autor analizira semantiku zaglavlja u kontekstu judeokršćanske simbolike i u sklopu rezultata novijih ispitivanja ornamenta u medievistici. S obzirom na analogije u građi, romboidna mreža s upisanim zlatnim ljiljanima, nadvišena trima križevima i označena s nomen sacrum, simbolično prikazuje Riječ, izvor Dekaloga.

Narrativity and Legitimation in the Discourse of the Communist Archives: Analysing the Files of “The Burning Bush Organization”

Narrativity and Legitimation in the Discourse of the Communist Archives: Analysing the Files of “The Burning Bush Organization”

The burning bush

book reviews ISSN 1948-6596 The burning bush Fire in Mediterranean Ecosystems: Ecology, Evolution and Management. Jon E. Keeley, William J. Bond. Ross A. Bradstock, Juli G. Pausas & Philip W. Rundel, 2011, Cambridge University Press. 522 pp. US$120 (hardback). ISBN: 978-1-139-15321-8. http://www.cambridge.org This book examines the role that fire plays in the five Mediterranean -type climate (MTC) regions of the world: California, central Chile, the Mediterranean Ba- sin, the south-western portions of the West- ern Cape Province of South Africa, and south -western Western Aus- tralia and portions of South Australia. These re- gions are characterized by winter rains and sum- mer drought and all have vast areas subject to high fire risk. Although the book is focused on the MTC regions, this text is of more general interest: the authors have succeeded in producing an in- sightful study of fire as an important determinant of ecosystem assembly and distribution. The au- thors use the MTC regions as a way to explore the interactions among vegetation, fire regime, cli- mate and geology. The sclerophyllous shrublands within the MTC regions (the Mediterranean-type vegetation) have received a great deal of attention from plant ecologists and evolutionary biologists and have served as some of the textbook examples of con- vergent evolution (e.g. Mooney 1977). Such work necessarily emphasized the broad similarities in climate across these five regions and often as- sumed that climate was the major cause of trait evolution and community composition. One strength of this book is the authors' use of the dissimilarities in environmental factors across these regions to tease apart the potential drivers of vegetation distribution. The authors consider the full range of plant communities found in these regions and also discuss the occurrence of Medi- terranean-type vegetation outside of areas strictly defined by a Mediterranean-type climate. This comparative perspective allows the authors to form some conclusions regarding when winter rain or summer drought are likely to be the impor- tant climate drivers of vegetation and allows them to examine the feedback interaction between fire and plant communities that can create sharp vegetation shifts within a climate region. The book is structured into three sections. The first section provides an overview of ecosys- tem convergence and indicates the major similari- ties and differences in both vegetation and fire across these regions. The chapters on fire regime and on fire-related plant traits in this section pro- vide an excellent, stand-alone, brief introduction to the ecology of plants and fire. The second section includes a chapter on each of the five MTC regions. Another strength of this book is in having the detailed chapters on each region explicitly compare similarities and differences. Some minor stylistic inconsistencies across chapters betray the multiple authored na- ture of the book (with authors based in four of the five MTC regions), but the chapters on individual regions are quite good and each covers the major vegetation types, the floristic composition and evolutionary history of the lineages that comprise the vegetation types, and detailed information on the historical and current role of fire. The final section covers trait evolution, community diversity and fire management. These chapters synthesize and build upon the informa- tion thus far presented. The authors make the strong argument for fire playing a key role in plant evolution and provide a good review of the accu- mulating experimental and comparative evidence for fire adaptations. A chapter on origins of Medi- terranean-type vegetation is especially useful be- cause it not only covers the paleoclimatic and pa- leobotanical information available, but also rigor- ously examines the assumptions inherent in many previous investigations of convergent evolution. As they do throughout the book, the authors here attempt to determine which elements of climate frontiers of biogeography 5.3, 2013 — © 2013 the authors; journal compilation © 2013 The International Biogeography Society

Where Did God Go? Theophanic Shift in Exodus

Divine presence in Exodus is vigorous, decisive, and variable. The Burning Bush, the ten plagues, the parting of the Sea, and the covenant atop Mt. Sinai all portray providence as interventionist in nature. Yet, after the Sinai theophany, divine potency downshifts and becomes manifest as “a pillar of cloud and of fire” and a cloud surrounding the desert sanctuary. This shift in theophany toward ephemeral imagery signals, not an attenuation of divine power, but the increased role of the people in discerning divine presence via the cult. The present essay first examines the relationship between the Sinai theophany (19–20) as a potential source of the cloud and fire elements for the pillar. Then, it discusses the imagery of a pillar of cloud as a new form of theophany that links divine guidance to constituting Israel in the desert journey via instruction and the cult. A final section argues that the pillar of cloud image served at least a dual agenda for the priestly redactors: one theological, built on divine ineffability within Israel's aniconic tradition; and one prescriptive, for participation in worship.

Evaluation of Container Ornamental Species Tolerance to Three p-hydroxyphenylpyruvate Dioxygenase-inhibiting Herbicides

Selective weed control in ornamental plant production can be difficult as many herbicides can cause unacceptable injury. Research was conducted to evaluate the tolerance of several ornamental species to applications of p-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD)-inhibiting herbicides for the control of problematic weeds in ornamental production. Mestotrione (0.09, 0.18, and 0.36 lb/acre), tembotrione (0.08, 0.16, and 0.32 lb/acre), and topramezone (0.016, 0.032, and 0.064 lb/acre) were applied alone postemergence (POST) in comparison with the photosystem II-inhibiting herbicide, bentazon (0.5 lb/acre). All herbicide treatments, with the exception of the two highest rates of tembotrione, caused less than 8% injury to ‘Noble Upright’ japanese holly (Ilex crenata) and ‘Compactus’ burning bush (Euonymus alatus). Similarly, no herbicide treatment caused greater than 12% injury to ‘Girard’s Rose’ azalea (Azalea). Conversely, all herbicides injured flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) 10% to 23%. Mesotrione- and tembotrione-injured ‘Radrazz’ rose (Rosa) 18% to 55%, compared with only 5% to 18% with topramezone. ‘Siloam June Bug’ daylily (Hemerocallis) injury with topramezone and tembotrione was less than 10%. Topramezone was the only herbicide evaluated that provided at least 93% control of redroot pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus) with all application rates by 4 weeks after treatment (WAT). Redroot pigweed was controlled 67% to 100% with mesotrione and tembotrione by 4 WAT, but this activity was variable among application rates. Spotted spurge (Chamaesyce maculata) was only adequately controlled by mesotrione applications at 0.18 and 0.36 lb/acre, whereas chamberbitter (Phyllanthus urinaria) was not controlled sufficiently with any herbicide evaluated in these studies. Yellow nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus) was suppressed 72% to 87% with mesotrione applications at 0.18 lb/acre or higher and with bentazon at 0.5 lb/acre by 4 WAT. All other herbicide treatments provided less than 58% control of yellow nutsedge. In the second study, ‘Patriot’ hosta (Hosta), ‘Green Sheen’ pachysandra (Pachysandra terminalis), autumn fern (Dryopteris erythrosora), ‘Little Princess’ spirea (Spiraea japonica), ‘Green Giant’ arborvitae (Thuja plicata), and ‘Rosea’ weigela (Weigela florida) displayed no response to topramezone when applied at 0.024 and 0.095 lb/acre. Since 10 ornamental species in our studies exhibited less than 10% herbicidal response with all rates of at least one HPPD-inhibiting herbicide then it is possible that these herbicides may provide selective POST weed control in ornamental production systems.